Tuesday, September 6, 2016

Dateline: UC Davis Sustains Its ‘Cool School’ Ranking

TransportiCARelevance:Besides the leadership UC Davis has consistently demonstrated in sustainability - especially in getting the campus community out of cars and onto bikes and busses, TransportiCA's editor is an alum, hence the guaranteed posting.By Dateline Staff on September 6, 2016 in University News

Quick Summary

‘Sierra’ magazine tabs the nation’s greenest universities

‘Washington Monthly’: UC Davis good for the public good

Other rankings: QS, Princeton Review and Campus Pride

UC Davis repeats this year as a top-10 “Cool School” in Sierra magazine’s ranking of America’s greenest colleges and universities. The environmental magazine published its 10th annual “Cool Schools” report online today (Sept. 6).Out of a record 201 schools in this year’s rankings, UC Davis came in
at No. 8 — marking the fifth time UC Davis has made the top 10 in the
last six years.“Placing once again in the top 10 of this widely watched ranking
helps to publicly recognize the work done by staff, faculty and students
at UC Davis to make sustainability part of our campus culture,” said
Camille Kirk, assistant director of sustainability.“We have more work to do, but it is nice to take a moment to pause
and celebrate what we’ve already achieved, such as installing the
largest solar power plant of any university in the country, hosting the
first and only Mandela Washington Fellows Energy Institute this summer,
reducing irrigation water use by a third the past year, and providing
many kinds of opportunities for students to connect and engage with
campus-based sustainability work through classes, clubs and
internships.”The QS World University Rankings for 2016-17
also came out today, showing that UC Davis maintained its place at No.
85. QS rankings are based on six factors, among them academic reputation
and employer reputation, student-to-faculty ratio and the number of
citations per faculty member (as a means of assessing research impact).UC Davis is also among 381 schools in The Princeton Review’s 2017 edition of “Best Colleges”
for undergraduate education — representing about 15 percent of the
nearly 2,500 four-year colleges in the United States. The Princeton
Review cites academics as the chief reason for each school’s inclusion
on the list, and says it also considers surveys in which students rate
everything from financial aid to on-campus food.The Princeton Review does not give overall rankings, 1-381, but it
does compare colleges and universities in a number of categories derived
from students’ survey responses (about 375 per school, on average). UC
Davis earned a seventh-place ranking for “best health services,” and
top-20 rankings in categories whimsically labeled “Got Milk?” and
“Scotch and Soda, Hold the Scotch” — indicating students’ leaned toward
nonalcoholic beverages over beer, and soda all by itself over soda with
hard liquor.In rankings released last week:

• Washington Monthly — The magazine
recognized UC Davis as a top-10 national university based on
contributions to the “public good.” The magazine defines the “public
good” as social mobility (recruiting and graduating low-income
students), research (producing cutting-edge scholarship and Ph.D.s) and
service (encouraging students to give something back to their country).

Acting Chancellor Ralph J. Hexter said the ranking is well-deserved.
“Our work is all about improving people’s lives,” he said. “We couldn’t
be more proud of our students, staff and faculty for their engagement
and their commitment to make the world a better place.”In Washington Monthly’s new rankings,
published in the September-October issue, UC Davis comes in at 10th
best out of 303 national universities, public or private. Three other
UCs also made the top 10: San Diego, fourth; Berkeley, seventh; and Los
Angeles, eighth

• LGBTQI-Friendly — The national, nonprofit organization Campus Pride
listed UC Davis among the 30 best colleges and universities in the
country for LGBTQ-inclusive policies, programs and practices.

Dateline Staff
Dave Jones, editor, can be reached at 530-752-6556 or
dljones@ucdavis.edu. Content provider Cody Kitaura can be reached at
530-752-1932 or kitaura@ucdavis.edu.